Networker

Re: [Networker] [I] Re: [Networker] Advice concerning LTO upgrade

2007-01-16 18:48:12
Subject: Re: [Networker] [I] Re: [Networker] Advice concerning LTO upgrade
From: George Sinclair <George.Sinclair AT NOAA DOT GOV>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:39:18 -0500
Thanks for the tips. The only thing we need now will be a recommended stinit.def file. I'm not sure where I got the one we've been using for the LTO-1 drives, and I have no idea what manufacturer made the LTO-3 drives they'll be installing. Our old LTO-1 drives are Seagates, and I guess Seagate became Certance which is now owned by Quantum? OK, so they could be Certance/Quantum or IBM or HP. I couldn't find anything about stinit.def on Storagetek's site (now part of Sun), but Quantum has information on this buried down under the documentation for the drives for Linux installation, but they
refer only to Certance which I guess makes sense.

I'll make a separate post for help with  this.

Thanks again.

George

Patterson, Charles P. wrote:

They've changed somewhat from version to version so don't quote me, but
I work from the rule of thumb:

Network Edition: 32 for the server, 16 for each additional storage node.
Power Edition: 64 for the server, 32 for each additional storage node.

I don't think dedicated storage nodes add the same amount, but check the
docs for that.

-----Original Message-----
From: King, David [mailto:dking AT eastman DOT com] Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 1:02 PM
To: EMC NetWorker discussion; Patterson, Charles P.
Subject: RE: [I] Re: [Networker] Advice concerning LTO upgrade

What are the server parallelism max's for the various licenses?

David L. King


-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Patterson, Charles P.
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:44 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [I] Re: [Networker] Advice concerning LTO upgrade

Hi George,
Some optional steps after the upgrade that often get overlooked:

- Enable Automedia management on the library after you run jbconfig.
- I usually set the library's "Max Parallelism" to equal the number of
drives to speed up inventory and label processes.  The default is (# of
drives) - 1.
- Update the library's timers.  The defaults work, but you may get fewer
unload retries if you increase "Eject Sleep", "Unload Sleep", and "Load
Sleep".  I use 15 seconds but it varies widely from library to library.
- Configure the target sessions on each tape drive.  The default is 4,
but I've found LTO-3's can restore comfortably between 6 and 10 target
sessions per drive.
- Set the "Volume Default Capacity" for each drive if you want.  This
mainly just improves the accuracy of when NetWorker claims a tape is
full in nsrjb or the volumes tab/window in nwadmin. - Update your server parallelism to match target sessions if you haven't
maxed it out based on licenses.
- Configure a cleaning slot and auto cleaning if you use it.

One thing I've found is that tapes labeled with LTO-1 drives sometimes
can't be read using scanner with LTO-2 or LTO-3 drives.  So don't remove
any old media from the media database unless you really want to get rid
of it.

Charlie Patterson
Backup Administrator, Computer Operations University Information
Technology (UIT) Tufts University

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of George Sinclair
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:16 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Advice concerning LTO upgrade

Hi,

We've paid for an upgrade from LTO-1 to LTO-3 drives on a Storagetek L80
tape library.
This library was previously used with Legato NetWorker 6.x, running on a
Linux storage node.
The library is SCSI (LVD), not fibre (fiber) channel, and uses 4 LTO-1
drives. We recently upgraded our primary server (Solaris) and storage
node to 7.2.2. Until the upgrade happens,  the library is only being
used to read tapes, if necessary. We're using a separate SDLT
-2 library and another
storage node (Linux) to perform our regular nightly backups. The L80
library has 11 LTO-1 tapes in it at this time.

*** My question is what steps should we consider before having
Storagetek come to do the upgrade? ***

Here are the steps I was considering:

1. Ensure that NetWorker 7.x communicates properly with the library as
it is now with its LTO-1 drives, e.g. load, unload, recover data. Done -
All OK.
2. Create a tar archive tape (junk data) using one of the drives.
3. Schedule upgrade with Storagetek
4. Shut down storage node when they arrive, and let them have at it.

If Storagetek needs to perform any read/write tests, we have plenty of
new LTO-3 media. If they need to run backward compatible read tests,
using older LTO-1 media, we would have the tape made in step 2 above
that we could offer as a sacrificial lamb.

5. Reboot storage node to make sure it sees library and new devices
report properly.
6. Run various tools, e.g. inquire, sg_map, tapeinfo, loaderinfo, mt,
'cat /proc/scsi/scsi', sg_inq, etc.  to make sure everything looks
reasonable.
7. Reconfigure library using jbconfig.
8. Re-inventory library and test read/writes to new media and some
recovers from older LTO-1 media.
9. Set /etc/stinit.def to include proper info for LTO-3.

Thanks in advance.

George

--
George Sinclair - NOAA/NESDIS/National Oceanographic Data Center
SSMC3 4th Floor Rm 4145       | Voice: (301) 713-3284 x210
1315 East West Highway        | Fax:   (301) 713-3301
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3282  | Web Site:  http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/
- Any opinions expressed in this message are NOT those of the US Govt. -


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--
George Sinclair - NOAA/NESDIS/National Oceanographic Data Center
SSMC3 4th Floor Rm 4145       | Voice: (301) 713-3284 x210
1315 East West Highway        | Fax:   (301) 713-3301
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3282  | Web Site:  http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/
- Any opinions expressed in this message are NOT those of the US Govt. -
To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and type 
"signoff networker" in the body of the email. Please write to networker-request 
AT listserv.temple DOT edu if you have any problems with this list. You can access the 
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